Factoids and the Sex Abuse Panic

Jay Baskins

Renewed version June 2007

I have simplified the list I made earlier. I published the other one on
Sosen and it was pointed out that it was counterproductive to put it into a
progressive vs. conservatives frame of reference. That is true. So I re-wrote
it [...] as follows:

Sex offenders in the US have been subjected to a large variety of draconian laws
and practices. Many of these laws are highly questionable from a constitutional
point of view. They also serve to make the world a more dangerous place for
everybody -- not only for the sex offenders and their families -- but for
potential future victims as well.

Whatever a person might think about sex offenders and their treatment in this
society, surely we can all agree on the need for a rational and informed
discussion of the issue. One of the main obstacle in the way of the needed
discussion is the huge amount of misinformation that is published in the
nation's media. This misinformation is largely in the form of factoids.

Factoids

A factoid is a statement of presumed fact that people believe to be true
because they hear it repeated over and over. The extensive use of factoids has
been a central strategy of those who appear motivated to maintain a high level
of sex abuse hysteria.

Here are a few examples of common factoids.

1. Factoid: The “pedophile” is set apart from most men because he finds
children or adolescents sexually attractive.

Fact

A study of randomly selected “normal” men at Kent State University (Hall,
G. N., Hirschman, R, and Oliver, L. 1995) discovered that “20% of the current
subjects self-reported pedophilic interest and 26.25% exhibited penile arousal
to pedophilic stimuli that equaled or exceeded arousal to adult stimuli.”

2. Factoid: The “pedophile” is a violent man who forces himself on
children.

Fact

Baurmann in the largest study of child abuse ever carried out discovered that
in 80% of all cases of reported illegal sexual contacts “the perpetrator had
exhibited something other than threatening or violent behavior.”

4. Factoid: The “pedophile” is unable to control himself and will always
“re-offend.”

Fact

One of the more extensive studies on this issue is called “Recidivism of
Sex Offenders Released from Prison in 1994” It is available from the US
Department of Justice. (Langan, P, Schmitt, E., and Durose, M., 2003) According
to this study,

“Within the first three years following release from prison, 3.3% (141 of
4,296) of released child molesters were rearrested for another sex crime
against a child."

5. Factoid: The “pedophile” is a brutish, primitive, self centered
person who is incapable of empathy.

Fact

Who have been some well know pedophiles?

(I will use this term to mean a person who is strongly attracted to
children or young adolescents.)

Here are a few:

Thomas Mann,

James Barrie,

Lewis Carrol,

Alan Ginsberg,

Walt Whitman,

T.E. White,

W. H. Auden, and last but not least

Shakespeare.

Most people who know anything about these people would not see them as
brutish and primitive.

6. Factoid: Minors never feel positive about their relationships with
older partners if there is a sexual component in that relationship.

Fact

Heinz Kohut, the founder of “Self Psychology” and one of the most
important psychological theorists of the 20th Century reported that

"I had this private tutor, who was a very important person in my life.
He would take me to museums and swimming and concerts and we had endless
intellectual conversations and played complicated intellectual games and
played chess together."

They also did sexual things together, which they both enjoyed, but Kohut felt
the sex was more or less incidental. The important thing for him was the
relationship. He said

"I was an only child. So it was in some way psychologically
life-saving for me. I was very fond of this fellow."

Heinz was about 10 or 11 at the time. He describes his years with his tutor
as being perhaps the happiest ones in his life.

(Strozier, 2001. “Heinz Kohut: The making of a Psychoanalyst.” PP. 95
and 96.)

If a person were interested in how man-boy relationships typically
appeared to the younger partner in a more permissive society, he or she
could read “Boys and Their Contacts with Men” by Theo Sandfort: < http://www.ipce.info/host/sandfort_87/
>.

7. Factoid: Every one convicted of sexually abusing a child was also abused
as a child.

Fact

In “Self-Reported Sexual Interest in Children: Sex Differences and
Psychosocial Correlates in a University Sample,” Smiljanich and Briere report
that no statistically significant relationship was found between childhood
sexual abuse and adult attraction to children. A small correlation between
childhood sexual experiences and adult sexual behavior toward children has been
reported in studies using prison populations, but no responsible
researcher has ever suggested that every child abuser was abused as a
child.

8. Factoid: Children are not able to consent to a sexual relationship with
an older partner.

Fact

Before saying whether this is true or not it is first necessary to determine
what the statement means.

If it means that children are not legally permitted to make such
decisions, the statement is true providing the children fall within the age
range of people who are not permitted to make their own decisions about
their sexual lives.

If it means that children cannot make an “informed decision” and by
this use of the term it is meant that they cannot see all the possible
ramifications of their decision, this is also true. But it is true of every
important decision anyone of any age ever makes. So by itself it has only a
very limited meaning.

If it means that children are not able to express their disinclination to
do something they don't want if they are in a relationship with an older
person, it is untrue. Anyone who has ever tried to get a child to eat
something he or she does not like, or do his or her homework when a special
program was on TV, or tried to get a child to go to bed when she or he did
not want to knows this is not true. Children do in fact know what they want,
and in a situation where they are permitted to say yes or no, they are quite
capable of doing so in accordance with their real wishes.

9. Factoid: There is a natural progression in the “career” of the
typical sex offender from minor and non-violent offenses to acts of violence or
even murder.

Fact

A person who has engaged in sexual activity with a child or young adolescent
that is non-violent and consensual is no more likely to progress toward violent
acts that is the heterosexual or homosexual person who is sexually active with
adults.

Baurmann, in the conclusion to the study cited above, gives great emphasis to
the fact that exhibitionists, non-violent individuals who have disregarded
social norms, and violent sexual offenders are three very distinct groups. He
points out that

“the uncritical conflation of these three groups, combined with anxious
attitudes regarding sexuality, prevent the rational discussion of deviant
sexual behavior that we so desperately need.”

He points out that people who have committed violent acts of any kind
against people are more likely to commit violent sexual acts than are
non-violent sexual offenders.